I am just wrapping up a week at the MVP Summit and one of the System Center MVPs asked me to walk him through creating a Web Test in Visual Studio and using it for Availability monitoring…Of course i promised to do this and as with most good intentions we ran out of time!  I am hoping this blog post will make up for the fact we couldn’t do it during the session! (Cameron – pleasure meeting you!)

Step 1: Creating the Web Test in Visual Studio

This is pretty much a **File > New **exercise once you are in Visual Studio

After the project is created press the Red record button, record your actions and save the file

Step 2: Creating the Application in Application Insights

It was pointed out to me the “Add Application” menu doesn’t give you the option to create an Application for JUST Availability Monitoring! 

Fortunately creating an application for Availability monitoring is actually easier than the “Choose your adventure” Add Application page!

If the screen shot doesn’t come through the directions are: Overview Menu > Application Menu > New Menu > Enter a Name > Add 

 Step 3: Adding Availability Monitoring to the Application

At this point just clicking on the Availability menu will walk you through creating a URL based test. 

To create a Web Test based Synthetic Transaction press the green “+” sign select “Multi Step Web Test” navigate to the folder you saved your Webtest into and Viola you are done!